87 years' notice and counting

Fred LeBrun, Commentary

Published 9:02 pm, Saturday, November 3, 2012

History may well record Hurricane Sandy as the first superstorm that helped re-elect a president.

A tad premature as predictions go, perhaps, but if President Barack Obama does prevail by a twinkle, it will be hard to argue against the high-stakes and totally unexpected political fallout of Sandy as the fickle factor that favored. Without Sandy, Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would have remained a prominent Mitt mouthpiece, with colorful language to follow, instead of becoming a huge cheerleader for Obama's handling of the storm damage and confounding his former allies, not to mention the rest of us. Most of all, though, Sandy presented the perfectly timed domestic crisis for a president to be dramatically presidential, and Obama rose to the occasion. At the same time, the startling devastation left up and down the East Coast a week before the election sealed the argument for heavy federal involvement in natural disaster recovery, contrary to the Republican mantra.

So, in all, Sandy did her part for the re-election effort.

The politics of Sandy, though, go far beyond electing a president, and will be with us for a long time.

It's going to be all about the lessons we learn from Sandy, who shapes those lessons and what we do about them. This is the storm event, combining a tropical storm, a nor'easter and high tides, that the City of New York has dodged for decades. The illusion of safety from flooding on Manhattan island is destroyed, gone. Although a scant 20 years ago, a surge did send ocean water into the subway system, it was nothing like what we've just witnessed.

After the destructive and immobilizing force of Sandy's record surge, it's now easy to imagine much worse. And that's not such a bad exercise to contemplate, not for a downtown just a few feet above sea level, and a general population that's been deluding itself for very long time.

More seawater surging in, more electricity lost for a longer period. No transportation. No food, water, gas. Limited exit for 9 million. Mayhem, looting. Have we seen this movie?

Lest we get a little too smug in the boonies, a reminder that the lower Hudson up to the Troy dam is an estuary, an arm of the sea. And the Hudson up here is only six or seven feet above sea level. Just imagine the damage a 25-foot surge straight up the Hudson would inflict on downtown Troy and Albany, not to mention the entire Hudson Valley from here to Manhattan. There is the little matter of an elbow in the estuary at West Point, that might slow a surge a little, but otherwise that could happen. Are any of us ready for that?

In light of Sandy our governor appropriately recognized the need to have what he called an extended conversation about climate change and how we need to refactor the weather for future storm protection. He deservedly received high marks from across the country for zeroing in on climate change. He got a lower grade for a half-baked suggestion for building surge protection out in New York harbor. This is no time to shoot from the hip.

Where we go from here with that conversation makes all the difference. The oceans are rising. This is not something a couple of drunks made up down at Clancy's off 34th; it's measurable against the wall down at the Battery Park. The water is six inches higher than it was 50 years ago. Computer models taking into account the melting ice cap and warming water and air temperatures predict the water around New York harbor could rise nearly five feet by the end of the century. As weather is warming, storms of various sorts are becoming demonstrably crankier, and with more water to toss around, ocean surges have more force and rain events more volume. Chances are good bigger and badder Sandys are in our future.

So that gives us 87 years and a few weeks to agree on various plans for the protection of New York's extensive urban and other shoreline, come up with regulations and laws, structures and strategies. Again, that we can all agree on, and finance. I wonder if we have enough time to get anything meaningful done. Or enough resources. It's a race we can't afford to lose.

It was an editorial on Sandy in the Buffalo News last week that directed me to a 2010 report, "New York Sea Level Rise Task Force Report to the Legislature," a 100-page document addressing much of this. The report was also referenced as an important blueprint by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli in his $18 billion assessment of economic loss from Sandy.

While the meat of the report will take a lot more than one column to digest, a number of points jump out. Primarily this: While politicians, including our governor, have been artfully ignoring climate change until a few were forced to recognize its effects, many very smart people have been working to identify all sorts of strategies to deal with it and have been trying to sound an alarm. We have a ton of expertise and talent in this state on climate change, in government and universities, and we have largely ignored the experts so far. Why?

Because the overwhelming force against a logical and urgent examination of what we need to do and how quickly we need to do it, while maintaining a strict eye on an array of environmental concerns, flies in the face of huge public forces.

Worldwide, the wealthiest and most influential people own the biggest homes closest to the water's edge. These are the very people who need to be told that some of them will have to lose their houses, or rebuild to conform to stricter codes. Developers will be told they can't build in the most expensive and desirable places. Local governments may be compromised out of their most taxable properties. National flood insurance, subsidized by you and me, actually encourages building in places that are the most vulnerable to flooding. This is all news government doesn't want to hear, so it's easy to understand why nothing has happened.

Even the 2010 report, which doesn't go into a great of detail, was controversial. A number of recommendations made by the panel of experts were not subscribed to by the representatives from the City of New York. In essence, the city objected to the overall emphasis on other than hard defenses, like dykes and floodgates and walls and other traditional flood deterrents. Nor did the city want to be strapped with new laws and regulations forcing compliance.

Still, that report and the experts who created it provide an excellent starting point for renewing the discussion on "what now?" Just as Sandy has provided a painful but necessary reminder that dealing with climate change and the rising oceans is no longer an abstract exercise, or without urgency. The clock on 87 years and a few weeks is ticking.